Nestled in the hills of Bayview Heights, where it has an unchallenged view of Bayview, Port Regal, and the surrounding areas in Freedom City. Claremont Academy's campus is picturesque and said to be a mirror image of the estate of the late 19th Century. Indeed, walking along the manicured lawns and admiring the Victorian-style brownstone buildings, one feels transported back to a different era. The fact is, though, between the various fires that plagued the Heights, the remodeling of the grounds from private estate to private school, and the damage incurred by the Terminus Invasion, little of the original buildings remain. The architecture has been kept authentic, and some of the buildings still have their original brickwork (reused over the years), but the campus is as modern as any 21st century structure, thanks to the funds poured into the project by Duncan Summers.

The original school, St. Thomas Aquinas Academy, was founded by Dr. Charles Claremont in 1871 as a prestigious private academy for the wealthy scions of Freedom City society. Sadly, the school, built on the grounds of an estate with a history of death and tragedy, never flourished and, after years of declining attendance, caused by an incident in the 1940s involving a series of mysterious fires, rumored to be tied to a vengeful ghost, damage from the Terminus Invasion shuttered the school. That was where Duncan Summers came into the picture. Between his wealth and his influence with the Freedom City elite, he founded a new school named after the original founder, the Claremont Academy.

Unknown to the general public, Duncan Summers had a history as The Raven up until a crippling injury forced him to retire the cape, and he had a secret goal, to train the next generation of superheroes. A small subset of the students were tutored in the use of their powers and talents as Next Gen, while the majority of the student population didn't know the school as anything more than yet another private school, special only for that attendance was restricted to the elite and a handful of scholarship students. This all ended with the arrival of the AlterniTeens.

A group of dimension-hopping teenagers, the AlterniTeens arrived on the Claremont Academy campus in 2007, seeking asylum after barely escaping a terrible battle. Confronted with a sizeable number of empowered teenagers, and unable to hide their very public arrival and identities when they had been viewed by a large amount of the student population, Headmaster Summers bit the bullet and established the Academy as a school exclusive to powered individuals and those who had talents sufficient that they were practically indistinguishable from powered individuals.

It's now 2018, 11 years later. The original members of Next-Gen have long since moved on. New members have come and gone until today's proud team came into existence. You're not on it, at least not yet. And right now, your odds seem bad for making that next step. You're all in detention right now, sitting in the Diana Falk Cafeteria, ordered to not leave while Next Gen is off helping the Freedom League fend off an incursion of undead pirates somewhere just east of Century Bridge. It's currently about 10 PM. The TV on the wall is currently set to a news channel showing the assembled superheroes fighting off the pirates. They seem to be winning, but progress is slow. Meanwhile, you're well-provisioned with the baskets of snack food, ranging from the healthy fruit to the calorie-dense bags of chips and sugary sweets, and school materials and laptops have been provided so that you won't fall behind on your studies. Still, you can't help but feel the sting of exclusion as you're unable to join the fight...

OOCThis is where you get a chance to roleplay a bit and get to know each other. I leave it up to you as to why you were put into detention. You might not even be guilty of what got you here. There are always students willing to tell tales, teachers who are unsympathetic for reasons ranging from the rational to the personal, and wacky hijinks that defy explanation for how you wound up holding the inflatable Lady Liberty doll in one hand and a shock prod in the other. I plan to award a Hero Point to the best story, on top of the usual starting one.

It's also up to you how well you know, or get along with, your fellow students here. You will be expected to eventually operate as a team, but that doesn't always play into how people interact initially.

Evelyn paced back and forth along the rows of tables, her boots clanking softly with every step to punctuate her continuing speech. ""And I don't care what they say, nobody learns anything in the first week. Everyone!" Evelyn turned to address her fellow students, "Can any of you name even a single thing you learned last week? Exactly!" Evelyn continued without waiting for a reply, "Not a thing! I spend just one week that would have been wasted in class renovating my lousy second-story dorm room, and I'd swear I've seen calmer responses to bank robbery. The basement lair was perfectly up to the task of supporting the building, I even consulted the Archertect just to make sure! Nobody even found it until yesterday!""But no, instead of encouraging me to explore outlets for personal growth and find my own space, I'm shackled with this insane demand on my time and energy while your faculty veto every idea I have! I don't yet have a reason to take revenge on the academic world, but are you trying to give me an early start? Mister, uh, you over there? Stop pretending to not hear me."
Evelyn finally deflated and sat down, looking to the person sitting next to her. "So what did pretense did they snatch you over?" she asked.

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OOC: If you can't read the shade of gray I'm using, let me know so I can change it to a darker grey.

As she usually did when Evelyn started off on her trademark 'speeches', Cindy had by the end of it mentally tuned the tone of her voice into a dull buzz in the back of her mind. To be fair, this happened with pretty much anyone who started talking at length. Adults included. Especially when the adults are specifically going about the things that she's not supposed to do, places she's not supposed to be, and the ever inevitable 'You could've been seriously hurt!'

It was that last one which got the most eyeroll out of her. She'd do it right now, but currently she was trying to balance the tip of her trusty super pink mechanical on her cornea.

A lot of their interrogation was about how she even knew there was such a thing as a 'danger room' hidden underneath the school, and the fact that she had somehow managed to slip past all the defenses getting in there. Something about security briskets and the severe danger their grill could be in if someone like her got in despite it all. Like she was ever going to snitch on her besties like that, get her roped into this mess too. Despite her effort, Trinh managed to find her own way to get locked up with her in the end. Such is life.

Honestly, getting back to that last thing they berated her about, it was the very prospect of her getting seriously hurt that coaxed her into turning the settings up to the max and just jumping right in. One solid punch from a giant robot though, and suddenly she'd transformed from a moderately sized young woman into compact high-speed wrecking ball, turning the probably multi-million dollar simulator room into a junk heap with literally no effort on her own part. The bat she'd brought with her had gotten mulched pretty early on.

PLINK

Only a minute that time. Well, at least she'd have plenty of time to practice over the next few months of her detention.

This confounded, new-fangled technology was ever problematic. The provided school laptops had a block on all of the fun sites, which Cyrus might have played on. He was looking for workarounds, but alas, he was simply lacking in the skills necessary to get around it. Internally, he cursed his age, learning new things was difficult, and not being born into a high tech society like his peers made it all the more so. Back in his day, kids learned from books. Mostly propaganda books, but books nonetheless.

What didn't help at all was one of his classmates complaining in a long-winded explanation of her tragic tale of dorm renovation, skipping class, and of course, winding up in detention. The presiding teacher had this glazed-over look in his eyes, like he was just barely reserving enough consciousness to appear awake, that the students might not try anything. The speech-giving student finally calmed down and sank back into her seat. "A compelling speech, Evelyn. Have you considered a career in politics?" Cyrus would ask his neighbor rhetorically, with a mischievous smirk forming on his lips, eyes still focused on the accursed portable information box, with it's annoying educational sites he had next to no intention of partaking of this afternoon.

Being one of Evelyn's seat neighbors and not paying attention to any body language that could suggest she wasn't asking him that question, "One of the faculty with mind reading powers caught me with a 'guilty conscience', and found a stash of pudding cups I was saving. Apparently despite having neither video evidence, nor eyewitnesses, their sudden lack of pudding incriminated me or somesuch, so here I am. Wherever has due process gone?" His fingers futilely tapped away at the laptop's many keys, eyes locked on the glowing display.

Congratulations Alex, you only just got back into school and you got your first detention ever. All because some jerk named Chad (douchebags are always named Chad). tried to snatch my backpack and my instincts kicked in. It was only a couple of punches, Chad stopped and Alex let it go. If this had happened on the streets that would have been the end of it, but next thing Alex knew one of his teachers hauled him into the principal's office for "attack a student". Alex tried to explain what happened, but both the teacher and principal wouldn't have any of it and he was given a month of detention.

A couple hours later and here he was and so far...detention wasn't all that bad: he could catch up on his accelerated make-up course work, no one was trying to talk to him yet, he got to watch a superhero punch zombie Jack Sparrow, and this Evelyn girl was making such a great distraction that Alex doesn't think anyone saw him fill his backpack with one of the baskets of food. And since he was perpetually hungry, he started grabbing an assortment of snacks from another basket to eat now.

This detention thing may be alright, as he bit into an apple with a grin.

Irene had been mostly trying to simply do her Detention in peace and quiet but Evelyn wasn't having any of that ranting along at a monologuing villains pace about the injustices of the world in general and school policy in particular. Irene for the most part let it slide and spent her time sending friendly smiles and the occasional joke Cindy and Trinhs way. She missed the third part of their impromptu foursome which the staff had taken to referring ironically to as the Four Horsemen, mainly because when they got together behind one Trinhs insane ideas; the end result was usually short of apocalyptic.

Sadly Ernie wasn't with them "Bug" was off on some South American Sabbatical with the bio teachers chasing down some species of Red army ant the size of a small cat that was seen marching around the amazon. She missed the little guys jokes--and him if truth be known-- but still Cindy and Trinh were fun enough for everyone. She'd had to miss their latest misadventure because of a late mid term project unfortunately, procrastination was a pain darnnit.

She tried to adjust her self to a more comfortable position Freaking benches were made for people half her size dammit, when Evelyn sat down next to her and asked her point blank what shed done to earn detention.

"Got into a fight with some Neanderthal named Chad and two of his buddies." she snorted disdainfully, she hated bullies with a passion "Jerk was apparently stinging from a fight he got into earlier and decided to take it out on some freshman."

She explained how she had intervened and the end result had been Chad hanging from a flag pole by his underwear, one of his buddies Punted into the center of the lake on the schools grounds, and the third one running face first into the side of a bus rather then getting stepped on.

"Think headmaster Summers was more upset about the footprints I left on the grounds then the actual fight." she huffed a bit pouty at the whole affair.

Dr. Silverback has wryly observed that this is like trying to teach lolcats about Shakespeare

Trinh sighed, closed her eyes, and tried again to ignore Evelyn's ranting. A side effect of her powers had left with with a peculiar intutive "feel" for exactly what time it was. It wasn't like she was looking at a watch or a clock, she could just feel every minute, every second, every nano-micro-moment of time as it passed. Like someone tap-tap-taping a metronomic beat againt the back of her eye... Which, eww, Cindy seemed to actually be doing. She looked at the clock that morning at breakfast. She'd been keeping perfect track of the time ever since.

22:02:02

Trinh was "seated" upside down-ish in her chair. Her knees handing over the backrest, her back where anyone else's butt would have been. Sometimes hanging upside down helped her concentrate. If nothing else, the blood rushing into her head sometimes drowned out the tap-tap-tap feeling of time. It wasn't working. With a sighm she spun around back into a proper seated position...

"Think headmaster Summers was more upset about the footprints I left on the grounds then the actual fight." she huffed a bit pouty at the whole affair.

"Mr. Summers said he thought about reporting me for 'attempted vehicular manslaughter.'" Trinh said, "Although it was totally Brad who ran face first into the bus. I just moved him into the street. He's got skin made of carbon-fibre nanotubes anyway. He's almost as tough as Cindy."

22:05:35

22:05:36

22:05:37

"I. Am. So. Bored."

OOC wrote:Idiots named Chad always have a buddy named Brad. It's like an immutable law of physics.

"Mr. Summers said he thought about reporting me for 'attempted vehicular manslaughter.'" Trinh said, "Although it was totally Brad who ran face first into the bus. I just moved him into the street. He's got skin made of carbon-fibre nanotubes anyway. He's almost as tough as Cindy."

Irene barked out a laugh 'Heh I though that was you, Brad never usually runs that fast nor does he corner that well."

She snickered recalling the sound of the impact of Brads face against the bus side, intermixed with the splash of Donald their third buddy landing in the water face first.

"I. Am. So. Bored."

Irene nodded in agreement "We need music."

Dr. Silverback has wryly observed that this is like trying to teach lolcats about Shakespeare

"He's got skin made of carbon-fibre nanotubes anyway. He's almost as tough as Cindy."

"Hah!" She snorted, knocking the pencil off balance causing it to clatter onto the floor. With a boastful fistpump the young girl continued. "I'd love to see Brad survive being tossed around like a curveball into ten million tons of titanium. And managing to destroy said wall instead of the other way around!"

Smug smile in place, her arms were crossed with self-satisfaction. "It's clear who the most superiorest guy around here is, and it's not a guy. Which is of course, me. Uh... I mean, I'm the superior one, not that I'm the guy. Though, I am the guy who's superior I but I'm also... Ahem, you get the jist. Me equals best. 'Nuff said."

"Got into a fight with some Neanderthal named Chad and two of his buddies." she snorted disdainfully, she hated bullies with a passion "Jerk was apparently stinging from a fight he got into earlier and decided to take it out on some freshman."

She explained how she had intervened and the end result had been Chad hanging from a flag pole by his underwear, one of his buddies Punted into the center of the lake on the schools grounds, and the third one running face first into the side of a bus rather then getting stepped on.

"Think headmaster Summers was more upset about the footprints I left on the grounds then the actual fight." she huffed a bit pouty at the whole affair.

Wow, most people keep their heads down after getting a couple of black eyes. He must be a slow learner.
Alex almost looks startled that he spoke out loud, but carries on.Ha, Wish I could have seen him hanging up there. He deserves worse.

Last edited by L-Space on Sun Jun 10, 2018 11:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"One of the faculty with mind reading powers caught me with a 'guilty conscience', and found a stash of pudding cups I was saving. Apparently despite having neither video evidence, nor eyewitnesses, their sudden lack of pudding incriminated me or somesuch, so here I am. Wherever has due process gone?" Evelyn twitched backwards at Merryweather's words. "They what!? Mind reading!? But that - they - the game - that's cheating! Heroes aren't supposed to poke into people's heads at random. This is all wrong", she lamented "don't they know how things work?"
Evelyn fell silent for a long moment before sighing and blindly reaching for food, perking her head up as Irene spoke. "We need music.""Huh? You don't have a pho - local net, local net. Pass your phone here for a sec, I've got some music and", Evelyn dropped her voice conspiratorially, "unmonitored internet." she continued as plucked a cable free from her right gauntlet

It seemed that Evelyn shared his distaste for the use of mind reading as a means of picking out the rambunctious rapscallions. It defeated the whole purpose of a good caper. "Indeed. The rules have truly changed. A mind reading hero back in the golden age would have had to be a villain to gain any popularity," Cyrus would comment, showing yet again that he was a fan of the classics. His expression fell rather sullen, "The teacher didn't even ask me to pay for the puddings or return them. Merely presented me with a detention slip. A boy can't even swipe a dozen or so puddings a la carte from under the cafeteria maids' noses without being persecuted to the fullest extent of the rules."

After a few more seconds fussing with the laptop, he would sigh and close it, giving up on the hopes of bypassing the educational locks. Irene, the mountainous maiden, commented that they needed music, which he promptly seconded with a flat, "Agreed."

His expression lit up a little bit when Evelyn revealed a quiet secret, regarding some unrestricted internet. But then he remembered that kids nowadays really lacked appreciation for classical music on the norm, and the only thing that could make a modern detention worse was playing a Four Part Bach chorale through a speaker while everyone tried to imagine that the sounds invading their ears were at one point immortalized for their quality.

He hoped that his revitalized body came with a refreshed musical palette, so that he could stomach what sonorous melodies or otherworldly lack thereof may come.

"Huh? You don't have a pho - local net, local net. Pass your phone here for a sec, I've got some music and", Evelyn dropped her voice conspiratorially, "unmonitored internet." she continued as plucked a cable free from her right gauntlet.

"Oh hey, cool!" She enthused, entirely disregarding the very rules-breaking nature of Evelyn's announcement. "Wait... Were we allowed to bring our phones? Awe man! That would've made this entire experience like, at least twice better."

"The teacher didn't even ask me to pay for the puddings or return them. Merely presented me with a detention slip. A boy can't even swipe a dozen or so puddings a la carte from under the cafeteria maids' noses without being persecuted to the fullest extent of the rules." Evelyn leaned forwards, cupping her cheek theatrically in her left hand as she sighed and spoke. "One would think," she began, carefully hovering her face a few millimeters away from the cold hard metal of her armor, "they would make something of it. Find the pudding thief! Practice. Exercise. Learning to fight crime."
She then turned to her left to answer the other girl's question. "They didn't take mine, but I was talking on dexter here", Evelyn wiggled the fingers on her right gauntlet, "when I came in and they know they can't take it. They might have figured they couldn't stop me."